Cloud Based Development Environments

[Updated 5/1/2014] In some ways, developers have done themselves a disservice in the tool department, like the shoemaker’s children going without shoes.  As a cloud user for some years now, I’ve always felt it was kind of strange that I have to setup a complex integrated development environment (IDE) on my workstation in order to develop for the cloud.  In addition, tools to push my code to the cloud platform for testing my cloud apps were missing. As a Google Docs user, I expect to have the same collaboration capabilities in my IDE.

This may be changing with the advent of cloud IDEs.    Mark Downey, a Product Manager at Codenvy, posted a comment to Infoworld saying that “they believe editing the code close to where it is meant to be executed provides countless advantages that have yet to be explored.... it’s just a matter of time before desktop IDEs are completely obsolete.”

When The SaaS Ship Sinks

I, like many others, received a letter from OfficeDrop, telling it’s customers they were closing the doors on the company.  To it’s customers, this means an eventual shutdown of their web software as a service (SaaS).  OfficeDrop is a cloud SaaS company that allows it’s customers to upload PDF documents (normally scanned documents) and then search for them after they are indexed on the OfficeDrop cloud servers.  The OfficeDrop service also allows it’s customers to send them the physical documents and then scans them as a service.  

HP Moonshot Servicability

I enjoyed this comment to the article Will HP Moonshot Ignite or fizzle.  Is this what cloud infrastructure is coming to?

PeterNic • 2 days ago

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Why are these even user serviceable? If they are cheap enough and plentiful enough, just give me a rack with hundreds of them... if any fail, bypass them, the same way as we bypass bad sectors on hard drives. This will remove a lot of the cost/sheetmetal and maintenance. Just a thought!

Collaboration, A Key Indicator of Performance

According to a report published in McKinsey Quarterly, “Givers take all: The hidden dimension of corporate culture”, corporate performance can predicted by how much employees freely share information, ideas and help one another.  Nowhere does it say that strong leadership, clear objectives and rewards aren’t factors but that the leading indicator is how much help and collaboration happens.  This article from TLNT covers many of the basics, but I’ve never seen anyone publish research with this perspective.